Things I love

1.  My relationship with my youngest (half) brother.  Sure, he’s 22 years younger than I am, but we are *friends*.  And he is so sensitive and smart and great, and I’m so happy that I’m in his life.

2.  The fact that I continue to know how teenaged girls think (see above).

3.  The fact that my Lebanese cousins were after me this weekend to change my name to theirs last weekend: “Look, you have to stop pretending.  You’re one of us.”

4.  The fact that my Lebanese step-dad was all “do you want to?” when I told him that, but then was all, after I told him, “but I can’t – I published my book under my name, and even if I ever get married I wouldn’t change it because of that” he was like, “you don’t need to.  You’re my little child.”  And yet, he was so happy that I even brought it up, and that his nephews pushed me on it 🙂

5.  Dancing with my cousins at my cousin’s lovely wedding.  And yes, I did “dance in two languages” as my cousin Nino asked if I would do.

6.  The fact that I took the weekend off of work in order to dance in two languages.

7.  The fact that I live only four hours from my hometown, which makes dancing in two languages at a wedding possible, although exhausting.  Don’t worry: my little cousin Mary, who is 9 and who likes science, is on board with inventing  teleportation technology for me.  She asked why I can’t be at everything, and I explained to her that the problem was the 4 hours each way, and that if she figured teleporting out, I’d be at everything.  She’s on the case.  Very seriously.

8.  My awesome brother from #1: “I was thinking and when our dad died it took a while but when I lost him I found you and I’m really grateful for that.”  (I corrected that for texting spelling.)  As I wrote back to him, “And I found you.  It goes both ways.  Maybe the best thing he did was to give us each other?”  He wrote back: “I couldn’t agree more.”